Been traveling, work conference, then vacation immediately after. That was poorly planned, as a lot of early mornings, with travel, with time zone changes, with 50 degree (F) temperature changes leads to health suboptimality. But, that has little to do with gaming.

Work conferences and family vacations do not lend themselves to much in the way of gaming. However, I have books to read, so I read on flights, something I should do more often as it really does reduce the discomfort of flying.

I read the first Grisha Trilogy book on one of the flights and most of another on another flight. I have since finished the trilogy.

Wins. Losses.

These are necessary things for drama. Literature is replete with such. Gaming?

As an aside, women’s college basketball is interesting for the first time in a long time. Friday is why sports is sports. As wagerable as it is, weird stuff happens, and that drives the future interest.

You have to both lose and win or gaming is boring. Even competitive gaming. Why do I value some of my achievements? Because I lose often enough. Why do I disdain certain achievements? Because the challenge wasn’t there, the win didn’t come from doing anything more than showing up.

Losses can sting, but they build (player) characters. If all you do is “17, hit, 6 damage, any more orcs, open chest”, well, I guess that is a videogame and videogames and videogame RPing have appeal, but it’s not the same level of appealing.

I like reviews. I prefer movie reviews to movies. I read reviews of TV shows I watch. I read reviews of the Grisha books. Why?

When I finished Wise Man’s Fear and got bored reading Auri’s book, I decided to start in on the Grisha Trilogy. It seemed goth. I was expecting dark fantasy. I was not expecting young adult. Not even romantic fantasy, though maybe I could have made a bit more effort reading blurbs.

Tonal whipflash. What is romantic fantasy, btw? I was thinking about it. I differentiate a romance story with fantasy elements from a fantasy story with romance elements (aka all fantasy I am aware of). To me, Grisha is in the former, but, then, I’ve read very little young adult.

I was not fond of the first book. The rest of the series felt more pleasant, but that could be because I reset expectations. Low expectations – enjoy life.

Wait, what’s the point of all of this again? Well, I’m going to continue reviewing the series and maybe include something spoileriffic, but let’s take a moment to get back to wins and losses.

Kingkiller has wins and losses, as one might expect. Grisha just feels like endless losses. It’s morose. That’s a turn off to me. I don’t just want happy endings, I want “this is pleasant” at other times.

Which brings me to Arrow. Arrow is better. Prometheus is better. It’s still way too dark. Just stop. Superheroes should have fun. I know. That seems weird when everyone thinks the only way to have drama is to be dark and when comics do get into bad stuff. But, you don’t dwell on the bad stuff in my comics like TV shows love to dwell on bad stuff. For all that soap operas are a model for superhero shows, I often found soap operas to be less dark.

I’ve played in campaigns that were just misery after misery. That wasn’t fun.

Challenges, setbacks, losses – they don’t have to be a murderfest of murderyness. They don’t need to involve torture and imprisonment and disfigurement. Actually, if you think about quite a bit of fiction, the loss is just not getting a lot of money. Having the potential love interest hook up with someone else, not scoring a big haul, getting assigned escort missions, having the regional map borders redrawn – these can be losses.

So, interesting reviews for Grisha3. Some people absolutely hated it for how it resolved. For many (I presume), the Darkling is the favorite character. The complex bad boy who is oh so sexy. Except, he’s neither complex nor bad boy.

Deeds Not Words.

More than anything else, L5R’s value to society is that. Not a new concept, but it needs to be a mantra. This is why I get so frustrated with sports talk shows. I like sports talk shows. Some of them are the most relaxing thing I usually do. But, they obsess over comments athletes, coaches, and owners make.

Why? I mean, why bother?

People say untactful things. Politicians get crucified for it in many cases, though I don’t know why we are so concerned about what people say. Is it insight into their souls? Perhaps. But, people aren’t paragons of virtue, nevermind that people don’t agree on what is virtuous. I, for example, am not enthralled by sales tax increases, but I have no problem with gas tax increases (with credits or whatever for the trucking industry because, you know, the country is dependent upon trucking).

What’s important in sports is numbers. Focus on numbers. 111-1 is a number that should have been a bigger story. There should have been all sorts of sociology analysis on how losing saved the sport.

Sure, the series wasn’t suited to me. I’m not opposed to romance being the primary driver … or am I?

I tried to think of what I read that was more romantic fantasy than not. Spell for Chameleon? Nope. That’s somewhat comedic fantasy. Anita Blake? Now, here’s romantic horror … in classification. But, I think the better description of the series when I enjoyed it was hard boiled detective novel meets supernatural romance. There was a balance. And, btw, if you want a real dark, sexy bad boy, Jean-Claude is that archetype.

I got to thinking about how you can identify romatic fantasy from fantasy with romance. The romantic object in the latter is often underdeveloped. John Carter/Barsoom books are romantic. They are driven by the need to rescue love interests. Hardly unusual when they were written. But, still, the love interests are objects, something that reflects character rather than being interesting characters in their own right.

Spellsinger. Love interests are bit players. What of second Covenant series? Better balance, for sure, but I don’t put the romance at the heart of the story, though there’s a relationship at the heart of the story. The two lovers who struggle to just be happy together is so common that even when it’s huge, it doesn’t necessarily strike me as the point. Well, maybe that’s more Covenant, which can be a burdensome psychological examination of victimhood rather than “I’m so jealous slutty empress batted her eyelashes at you, boyfriend material”.

Anime I often watch has similar balance, of it being more about fights or humor or whatever than true love. Magic girlfriend shows so often are episodic humor.

Anyway, I enjoyed aspects of Grisha. I would agree that it was a pageturner. That doesn’t speak well of the term pageturner, though, as I was mostly waiting for some sort of resolution rather than looking forward to the next chapter.

I wasn’t bothered by the faux Russia culture. I would agree that the worldbuilding was off. It was neither overly missing nor done well. I would say the problem is that the worldbuilding had the wrong focus. I have no sense of one place versus another. I don’t know why the various cultural elements are the way they are. I didn’t care about NPCs (nor most of the PCs). The politics wasn’t given room to develop. And, everything was miserable, which might be a stereotype for Russia, but fantasy is about living in a world you prefer to live in to this one.

There was an opportunity to do something far more appealing to me, even given tropes that may get overplayed. But, was I supposed to be the audience?

Reviewers hated Mal. I didn’t. I thought he was okay. Third love interest? Okay. Neither OMG, so sexy. Nor, seems a little marysue. But, I’m not into guys, so maybe those characters were more appealing to those who are.

Pacing. Having stuff happen is good. Dwelling on certain narrative building things, like Covenant’s wife, is not enjoyable. Grisha had maybe even a good pace. I’m trying to tie back learning something from this series to gaming – give me more rope.

Anyway, I’ve talked about wins and losses before, but it’s my main takeaway from the series – it could have been so much more appealing if the PCs won more often.

Meanwhile, challenges in any sort of gaming don’t need to be torturefests. They can be “I just realized if I dropped my lance on C-5 instead, I could have promoted it next turn and feasted upon your soul”.

Also, keeping love interests constantly fighting is not necessarily. You know what’s great about soap operas? Everyone hooks up with a ludicrous number of partners over time. Who doesn’t want to see Kara and Oliver date? Thea and HR? The appeal? Humor. Soap operas are at their best when they are funny. True love can survive until the show’s finale.

Well, the next series to work on is last Covenant series. It’s a drag just trying to reread Runes of the Earth, which I hadn’t read in years. I’m sure that will manage to prevent me from writing more about L5R character builds and combat strategies.